My journey to the land of vegetables

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Well, either Whole30 really does have me on a rollercoaster of energy (she’s up! she’s down! the highest peak! the lowest valley!) or another culprit is to blame. I’m thinking it’s a combination of both. It’s not that I fail to recognize the impact of a hunk of dramamine I bit off this morning, necessitated by the arrival at our boat launch only to find the boat rocking the dock up and down. I get it – that made my brain as choppy as the open water. But I don’t want to put all the blame on 1/2 of a 1/2 serving of meclazine. I’ve found this food challenge impossibly squidgy to nail down and I swear every OTHER day I feel good. Guess I how I feel the rest of the days?

Bad/tired/hungry/weird days like today leave me feeling far less optimistic about the future than chipper days like the last time I wrote. I’m feeling a little grumbly/dizzy, and I reallllllly want to sip a gingerale to make me feel better. Even if it only works in my mind, and produces no actual positive benefit to my body. I’m feeling crankytired, so I reallllly want to enjoy something sweet and comforting to boost my spirit and temporarily spike my energy. And I’m OVER the forever-long cooking process (not to mention the 30,000 minutes my husband & I each seem to spend washing dishes, cookware, prep bowls and the like), so I realllllly want to grab a pre-made granola bar, fix myself a sandwich on a napkin (sans plate means sans dishwashing!) or go to Starbucks to eat both of those things with my grande nonfat latte.

I realized today that my kids are “suffering” a little, too. Not because we are restricting their intake to a similarly small pool of foodstuffs, but because: a)mommy & daddy are always cooking (my son tonight asked me what recipe I was looking for in Well Fed and when I asked how he knew it was a recipe book he replied, “Daddy is ALWAYS looking in there for a recipe”); b)the things we are always cooking offer no appeal in taste or smell, apparently, to my children (they are always whining about the smell!); c)dinner is now a slap-together-something-for-the-kids affair, since we end up preparing and eating dinner the two of us much later. We enjoyed those 5pm powwows over the table, even if one kid was always spilling something and the other couldn’t stop talking long enough to take a bite. Even if the food was “semi homemade” and probably 10X less healthy (with 10X more sodium). It was nice to have and share a meal, rather than sit and watch them eat and try to remember not to instinctively lick the mac-and-cheese spoon.

Hopefully as we adjust after the 30 days, we’ll find better ways to eat/cook/schedule ourselves back to the dinner table. But right now all I can think about is how tired and blargy I feel AGAIN, and how that makes me realllllly want some hot chocolate. Mmmmmm.

I was a mess today. First of all, I was exhausted the whole day. Like heavy-eyelids, saggy cheeks, humpback posture kind of tired. It probably didn’t help that my son decided to wake me up this morning at the deepest part of my REM cycle with a loud “BOO!” or “YEEACHA!” or “WATER BUFFALOS UNITE!” or whatever the F* he said. I don’t know, I didn’t hear specifics (sleeping deep – see above), but I certainly did have a response to the loud scream in my ear. And then, the day began.

There *was* hunger this morning which was novel and fun, but I couldn’t exactly take advantage of it by scarfing down some heavy scones with a large latte. One can dream, right? Nope, it was eggs & veg again. Sigh. At least tomorrow is Saturday which of course means…..bacon!! I should have actual time in the morning while my muffins (mmm, muffins) munch cereal and stare at the cartoon box. I CAN COOK BAAAACON. Maybe I’ll skip all the other stuff and just eat that for breakfast with a piping hot coffee. Sold! I’m back on board with this challenge!

Once I scarfed the vegg mix (like how I did that? veg+egg=vegg=i am a TOTAL GENIUS) and a sip of coffee, it was off to camp. There was actually a window in between camp for one boy and pool for another, so we came back home and I had a little more of the vegg. I tried to convince my toddler to nosh it with me, but he wouldn’t, um, bite. And he usually eats everything ESPECIALLY if mommy is eating it! But he rolled his eyes at me when he saw me wave another limp spinach leaf in his face and walked away. After breakfastredux, I needed another coffee (#2) and my new-favorite-dont-stop-me-ever treat, a spoonful of almond butter. I know this is probably wrong on many levels of the Whole30 challenge (except the important one, which is the actual FOOD, so shove off), and I know I probably shouldn’t be doing this after every meal. But I love it and am doing this after every meal. You shall not convince me to stop.

After the pool was a crying-jag-in-place-of-nap which was most unwelcome, thus another coffee (#3) while toddler&me continued our day as if no nap ever needed to be. More boy stuff….blah blah blah….a disgusting incident I will save for my parent friends since anyone reading this while being childless might actually die of horror…..dinner, bedtimes, more grogginess and crankiness by me. In fact, just as I sat down to yet another coffee (#4*) — *decaf, this time, but still giving me the illusion of a pick-me-up — my younger munchkin woke up like 9:30pm was the start of his new day and please would I come get him.

What does all this boringness mean to you? It means that Whole30 has yet to bestow upon me its magic source of energy. That I was tired as F* today, felt blargy and heavy all day, even while crunching carrots and pickles and peas. And that the only saving grace is that tomorrow with my BAAAACON I can have a coffee. A LARGE coffee.

1. Breakfast is not my jam. Yeah, I F*ed it again. Even with the gift of my husband, I managed to mess up. I came downstairs to a gorgeous plate of hash browns, bacon and fried eggs. Amazing! But I failed again to plan enough time (seriously, these meals take eons to consume) and I didn’t try hard enough to add some good veg/fruit to the meal (it was hard enough to eat half of what was there – will my hunger in the AM come back?)

Breakfast is just hard for me. Hard to eat, hard to dress up nicely, hard to prioritize. So tomorrow will be attempt #3 — a prepacked meal. Hardboiled eggs, chopped fruit/veg, maybe a handful of nuts or something. If it is packed up and ready to go, maybe I’ll nibble while prepping the boys and continue to nibble on the drive to camp? If not, I may have to resort to smoothies or something which I know aren’t ideal but it’s hard to imagine being too hungry afterwards. I still wasn’t hungry today 5hrs after breakfast!

2. It would be REALLY easy to overdo fat on this diet, Atkins-style. We are encouraged to eat meals with protein, veg and FAT, which is freeing in a good-but-also-dangerous way. Almost everything we’ve made so far has started with ghee in the skillet or oil in the pan, and it is easy to get carried away because “fat is good for us.” I’m not advocating that we remove it, but how much is too much? Breakfast was too heavy for me, and not just because of my failures. Bacon is fatty on its own, but mixed with eggs and potatoes cooked in bacon fat? I need to try harder to cook with *some* fat but not so much that I’m drowning in it. And I need to balance it more with unadorned produce.

3. Tuna packed in olive oil is INSANELY DELICIOUS. Where have you been all my life, can o’ lusciousness? Why do people buy tuna in water and then ADD MAYO, when this is yummier, healthier and easier to consume? I always avoided tuna because I can’t stand mayonnaise (it is seriously one of the most disgusting substances I have ever seen/smelled) but I also can’t stand dry-as-dirt tuna. And “packed in oil” was always a sinful mistake that only stupid people made. OR SO I THOUGHT. This tuna we found is just the fish and some olive oil, which I’m “supposed” to eat anyway. And as a topper on a salad of mixed greens, diced carrots, cucumbers, apple and almonds, it transformed my experience. I’m talking Best Salad Ever. I’m curious if I’ll still feel this way, though, after a month of damn tasty salads.

4. Onions are my kryptonite. I tried for the second time today to dice one up and had you happened upon me you would’ve immediately given your most sincere condolences. I wasn’t just sniffling, I was flooding walls of tears down my cheeks and onto my clothes. Must invest in space helmet.

5. I used to seriously pity people who told me they had to cut out dairy. Or wheat. Or sugar (!!) It always sounded so impossible and sad. Yet somehow cutting out all three seems easier. I know what that sounds like, but it’s true. Because instead of trying to tiptoe around a “regular” life and worry about ingredient lists on every product (is there sneaky whey in that? rice syrup?), this is just a new life. I’m not worrying about finding the right bread that has no dairy, or the right tomato sauce without sugar. I’m just eating the real stuff.

6. As “easy” as this seems in some ways, I also see how incredibly easy it would be to give this up. I started having intense, stabbing pain in my foot that my hubs had read could be related to vitamin deficiency. It seems backwards to me that I could be missing any vitamins, given that I’m eating more veg & fruit than I ever have in my life. But if that is the case (I’m going to start a multivitamin tonight), I would race so quickly and easily back to hot cocoa or yogurt or whatever I’m missing. I’d keep all this great food on the menu, I’d just add in some other things to see what my body is screaming about!